Art & Austerity: Lyons Lithographs at Towner

Barnett Freedman, People

One of the art shows of the summer opens at Towner in Eastbourne tomorrow. I'm going to see it next week, and meanwhile I've been enjoying 'Tea and a Slice of Art', Charlie Batchelor's book about the Lyons Lithographs. A full set of these wonderful pictures, commissioned in the post-war years by J. Lyons & Co. to decorate neglected tearooms, is being exhibited, with work by a host of wonderful artists. There's a fascinating article about in The Guardian, and for the background story about lithography in Britain in the mid-20th century, you might want to look at 'Ravilious: Submarine'. Rav would have been one of the first artists commissioned for this fabulously British project, but he died five years before the first pictures appeared on the walls of Lyons tearooms around the country...

John Nash, Landscape with Bathers

Michael Ayrton, The Spectators

Edward Ardizzone, The Railway Station

Charles Mozley, Henley

John Minton, Apple Orchard, Kent

 L.S. Lowry, Industrial Scene

The Lyons Teashops Lithographs: Art at a Time of Austerity runs at Towner, Eastbourne until September.